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The decision to seek a retrial was made by Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, following discussions with senior counsel and Scotland Yard's Counter-terrorism Command.

Sir Ken said he had "carefully considered" the case and concluded "that the prosecution should apply to retry each of these defendants on every count that the recently discharged jury failed to agree upon".

He added: "This will include a count that each defendant conspired to detonate improvised explosive devices on transatlantic passenger aircraft. We shall be returning to court to make this application in due course."

The seven men are Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27, - all of whom were convicted of conspiracy to murder on Monday - as well as Ibrahim Savant, 27, Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, Waheed Zaman, 24, and Umar Islam, 30. They will all be retried on a charge of conspiring to murder "persons unknown by the detonation of improvised explosive devices on board transatlantic passenger aircraft" between January 1 and August 11 2006.